The 20 brands young women want most

In what has to be the best collaboration between equity researchers and a teenage fashion magazine, Goldman Sachs has joined forces with Teen Vogue to produce the definitive "Teen Vogue-Goldman Sachs Brand Affinity Index." To find the top 50 brands, Goldman "polled over 1,200 Teen Vogue 'It Girls' on roughly 350 brands.

Respondents scored brands based on awareness, favorability, and word-of-mouth" — an important facet in our social media world where peer opinion is more easily available. The composite index measured the average of those three scores, excluding brands with low favorability scores (where favorability was one standard deviation below the mean).